1) FLEXIBLE GLASS
Lots of stories from ancient times describe incredible
inventions, some purported to be real and others attributed to magic and
wizards. It's fair to say that most of
them are nothing more than fanciful tales with no relationship to reality. However…when three separate historians
describe something, it wouldn't hurt to take a closer look. One such story comes from the reign of
Emperor Tiberius Caesar and tells of a glassmaker who came to his court with a
drinking bowl. The Emperor threw it on the stone floor where it merely bent
rather than shattering. He had the man beheaded because he feared the flexible
glass would undermine the value of gold. Some speculate that this tale presages
the development of tempered glass, but even that doesn’t bend, leaving the
truth lost to the ages.
2) STARLITE
Some truly great inventions came from unlikely sources which
is how you’d explain Starlite. Jane's International Defense Review contained
the first announcement of Starlite, a revolutionary insulation created by hobbyist
Maurice Ward in the 1980s. Live TV tests showed the material keeping an egg
completely raw after 5 minutes of a blow torch. Several noted scientists
vouched for its incredible ability to resist heat and impact. Unfortunately,
Ward died in 2011 before sharing the secret of Starlite to anyone and the
material hasn't been seen since.
3) THE OGLE CARBURETOR
Ever since the invention of the automobile people have been
looking for ways to improve fuel efficiency. Most of them are worthless or
scams (i.e., the dozens of "gasoline pills"), but every so often one
comes along that's more believable. In the 1970s, a man named Tom Ogle
developed a new type of carburetor that pressurized gasoline into a vapor and
injected it into the firing chambers. After installing it in his Ford Galaxie,
the car got a verified 113 miles per gallon. Unfortunately, Ogle died in 1981
before revealing the design of his carburetor.
4) SLOOT DIGITAL
CODING SYSTEM
Here's a lost invention that's very modern, one that
fascinates data storage experts. In the late 1990s Romke Jan Berhnard Sloot, a
Dutch electronics technician, announced the development of the Sloot Digital
Coding System. He described it as a revolutionary advance in data transmission
that could reduce a feature-length movie down to a file size of just 8KB. Sloot
demonstrated this by playing 16 movies at the same time from a 64KB chip. After
getting a bunch of investors, he mysteriously died on September 11, 1999, two
days before he was scheduled to hand over the source code.
5) WIRELESS POWER TRANSMISSION
An entire book could have been written about the inventions
that Nikola Tesla took to the grave with him. One such invention was the
ability to distribute power wirelessly on a global scale. Tesla had dazzled
crowds with demonstrations of short-range wireless power through the air, using
coils to light the bulbs as far as 100 feet away with no physical connection
between the coil and the light bulbs. Tesla claimed he had a significant
upgrade on that technique that allowed for electricity to be transmitted
through the Earth’s atmosphere, using high-altitude receiving stations. He
began constructing a prototype in 1901 but funding fell through and it was
never completed.
6) GREEK FIRE
Warfare has always been a driving force for the development
of technology. Apparently we humans never tire of coming up with faster and
more painful ways to kill each other. In the 7th century, eastern Roman (Byzantine)
emperors were purported to have deployed an incendiary weapon exceptionally
effective in naval warfare, as it could be shot from siphon-like devices and
continued to burn even when it came in contact with water. The substance has
come to be known as Greek fire, and
although we've certainly invented other similar weapons, the composition and
manufacture of this one was such a closely-guarded military secret that no
records remain.
Some lost technologies don't seem all that impressive on the
surface, but modern man still can't figure them out. A good case in point is
the stonemasonry of the ancient Inca people of Peru. Working with huge,
rough-hewn stones is extremely difficult especially without modern machinery.
But the fit of the blocks in Inca structures in Macchu Picchu is so tight and
precise that it's been said you couldn't fit a razor blade between them. It's
still unknown how the Incas of the time were able to transport the massive
stones—some weighing as much as 300,000 pounds—and place them with such
precision.
8) SILPHIUM
This item is a plant rather than an actual invention. It's what the ancient Romans did with it that
makes it notable. This member of the fennel family grew wild in North Africa
and was used as a primitive contraceptive, with its leaves ground into a resin
and used as a spermicide. The settlers of the area quickly began exporting
silphium in large quantities resulting in the plant quickly being rendered
extinct. To this day, we don’t know what in silphium's biological makeup
allowed it to serve as birth control.
9) TESLA DEATH RAY
Another Nikola Tesla creation. This one never saw the light
of day. In the late 1930s, Tesla approached the U.S. military with a
proposal. He would create a new style of
weapon for them that could be fired great distances. The exact blueprints for
this weapon have never been revealed, but there are a number of speculations.
Some believe it might have been a primitive laser, while others think it was an
electrostatic generator that blasted microscopic pellets of tungsten at intense
force a distance of over 300 miles. Tesla’s death device has since been lost
forever.
